RHS baseball crew plays state championship game

The Warrior baseball team entered Saturday's championship 3A match-up against Hope Christian at UNM with six straight wins under its belt.

It was the first RHS baseball team in recent memory to play in a state title game and the first squad to make it past the semi-finals.

Unfortunately, a good Hope Christian team defeated Ruidoso in five innings, 13-1, and finally thwarted the Warriors run at the state crown.

That's the end of the story, but not the main body of it.

Before Saturday's title game, RHS had been on a mission, winning six straight well-played games, including two victories (6-3, 7-4) over Portales in regular season district action; two important wins over visiting Socorro in the opening round of the state playoffs (May 11), 7-6 and 3-2; an 11-3 victory over Lovington in the quarter-finals at St. Pius High School in Albuquerque (May 16) and the excellent 9-3 win over St. Mike's last Friday at Cleveland High School.

Before the six-game win streak, the Warriors had lost four straight. But they gathered themselves in a mature fashion, gained a winning momentum and peaked at the right time.

"The players never gave up," RHS head coach Gilbert Alvarado said. "They set a goal to win the state title. Even when they had lost four in a row, I never once saw them quit. They always came to practice ready to work and get better. In practice, you either get worse or you get better - they always tried to better themselves.

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"What can you say about a team that gets beat by someone five times in the regular season (Lovington) and was looking forward to playing them again to avenge those losses (in the state quarter-finals) and believed they would win?"

In Saturday's 3A championship contest, Jessie Tercero stepped on the rubber for Ruidoso and went two innings and gave up six runs before Ryan Yaksich came in to relieve him. Yaksich gave up seven runs and also went two innings. Robert Lopez came on in the fifth and final inning and blanked Hope Christian.

The Huskies scored three runs in the first, three in the second, three in the third and four in the fourth inning. Ruidoso scored its lone run in the first inning. Ruidoso collected only three hits and committed two errors while Hope Christian pounded out 13 hits with no errors.

"Our players put the bat on the ball in that game," Alvarado said. "Yaksich hit three shots but only one fell in. Parker Johnson was robbed of a double by their left fielder; Lopez was robbed by the center fielder as was Brendan O'Connor in right field. That's baseball.

"The Warriors had a large amount of fans on hand - just as many as Hope Christian (located in Albuquerque) had and we thank them for their support."

The Warriors are to be congratulated on a fine comeback-winning season going 15-14 overall.

The second-place trophy will be added to the trophy case at RHS along with the district-winning Ruidoso football team and the RHS girls second-place trophy in volleyball.

In the pitching department for the season, Ryan Francis went on a three-game win streak at the end of the year by posting victories over Portales, Socorro and St. Mike's and finished with a 6-3 overall record.

Opposing teams only hit him for a meager .232 average. Yaksich was 2-3 but had the lowest ERA on the team with 3.94. Tercero was 5-3 with a 4.14 ERA.

In the hitting category, Johnson led the team with a .387 average; Yaksich was at .341; Lopez was at .327 and Cade Patterson hit for .318.

Alvarado's team traveled with seven sophomores to the state games. Six of them played the entire tournament. These boys, as well as the rest of next year's team, should be heard from again next season.

"The Ruidoso players know they can 'dance' with anyone," Alvarado concluded. "And they did it as a group."